


dressed in my best lies

by nonbinarywithaknife (littleboxes)



Series: dimension 20 [63]
Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: (offering food/shelter but only in exchange for the person attending services), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Campaign 05: A Crown of Candy, Court Politics, Gen, Homelessness, Implied/Referenced Starvation, Light Angst, Nobility, Poverty, Rogue Lapin Cadbury (Dimension 20), but depictions of the realities of living as a street urchin as a kid, eldritch fey, fake it til you make it, lying your way to the top, not quite child abuse?, predatory church practices, that kind of stuff, unreliable narrator (sort of. just like. keep in mind perspective?)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:29:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25845085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleboxes/pseuds/nonbinarywithaknife
Summary: Lapin doesn't summon the Sugar Plum Fairy. He ends up at Castle Candy anyway.
Relationships: Lapin Cadbury & Original Character(s)
Series: dimension 20 [63]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1706107
Comments: 24
Kudos: 52





	dressed in my best lies

**Author's Note:**

> chapter title is from jackrabbit by san fermin

Lapin is ten, and he's a very good talker. That's what the kind woman at the bakery says, after tossing him the only slightly stale loaf she would have otherwise thrown out.

(Lapin appreciates it, because otherwise he would've had to dig it out of the trash, and you never know if there are sharp things that might lead to infections which may as well be a dagger to the throat in the piles you dig through. You never know what other things the bread touches, like poisonous bits that've festered too long, that don't look poisoned until you're already halfway through eating them and well, you're already dead, might as well go out with a full stomach.)

Lapin is eleven and he's still a very good talker, but the kind woman at the bakery passed away, at least that's what the old gossips who stand around the bakery and glare at him say, and the new person who throws out old bread brings a broom with him to shoo Lapin away before he can start talking.

That's okay though, because the new person is lazy, and forgets to lock the back door of the bakery, and that means Lapin gets to spend the winter sleeping behind an oven that bleeds heat like blistered feet after too many days walking, and it’s so warm Lapin doesn’t mind the hardness of the wooden floor.

He gets found out just as winter's coming to an end, when the barest hints of spring are poking through the frost, and that means he has to start camping again, and it's not called Freezyburg for no reason, but at least as he snuggles into the cold roots of a partially uprooted tree, he has the memory of warm oven heat washing over him, and until the next icy breeze blows through, he can almost fool himself into believing he’s back, squished between the bakery wall and the back of the oven, surrounded by warmth and the smell of bread.

Lapin is twelve, and this winter is clinging on even as all sense says it's spring, and his campsite at the edge of town is frozen over and the bakery door is locked and Lapin is still a very good talker, but he's not quite good enough to talk himself out of this bad idea.

Everyone knows, everyone that matters, at least, like the other urchins Lapin knows- they're not friends, too busy scratching and scrabbling and fighting to stay alive to be friends, but they pass information along, and Lapin is almost as good a listener as he is a talker- that the church will always let you in.

They teach too much kindness not to let a poor dirty orphan child in, but getting in isn't the hard part, it's getting out. Because the church people don't want to help you they want to fix you, own you, make you into one of them, and you can't ask anybody for help because anyone who could would've put you there anyway and anyone who would is too afraid to bother.

Lapin knows all of this, and he thinks about Bitte and Matcha and all the others who went into the church and kept going back, until they started preaching the same stuff they used to mock, robes all shiny white, but Lapin can count his ribs and his toes are scarred over and he's starting to lose feeling in his ears, and if he doesn't go to the church he's pretty sure he won't last another season.

At least here, it's not as bad as the cities. Here, the church is small and a little cracked around the edges from neglect. Lapin's heard that in the cities, they don't even wait for you to come to them, to try to fix you. To try and fill you with the Bulb’s light. At least here, if you’re desperate enough to think about going to the church, you can choose to ask the spirits for help instead. At least when _they_ take you, you know what you're getting into.

Lapin takes one last longing look toward the bakery, and thinks about the stone circles the druids talk about, wonders if maybe he wouldn’t be better off asking the Fairy for help. But. Lapin’s one of the best liars in Freezyburg, and an even better listener, and that means when it comes to pretending to listen, he’s got pretty much everyone to beat. 

He pulls on the chantry door. It's not locked (it never is.) As he crosses the threshold, he tells himself that he won’t fall for it. He can make it through one winter.

Lapin is thirteen, and there are stolen Bulbian robes lining the interior of the partially uprooted tree that's his home as much as anywhere is, and there are new scars on his chest, and if he gets too near the little Bulbian church, he’s pretty sure they’ll come at him with more than a broom, but he’s out. He’s away. He’s alive, to steal himself another year. That’s all that really matters.

He's looking at the library. It's not a place he bothers with, too much security for too little reward. There's no food, no clothes for him to steal and they put the good locks on the doors. He could break them, yeah, probably, but he’d also probably break his lockpicks.

He won’t risk breaking his newly acquired lockpicks on them, but. He _could_. If he wanted to.

Malt was talking, and Malt's always talking, always trying to convince them that one of his quick schemes will make them rich and wealthy and powerful (Lapin is a good talker, and Malt is not, and he usually just ignores him) so when he starts talking about dealing with the spirits, with the _Fairy_? Lapin ignores him, like usual.

Ignores him until he pouts, says he can _prove_ it, that there's a book he’s been reading (and Lapin knows that’s a lie, because kids like them can’t _read_ ) that lets him get wishes from the fairy, that there's _proof_ , and that he’s going to summon the Fairy and get his wishes and then they'll all see, huh, just watch!

Lapin is as good a listener as he is a talker. His paws itch to steal the book for himself. He _wants_ those wishes, wants to _be_ something, wants to be _more_.

But. Lapin is a good talker and a smart kid and a lot of other things, most of them less nice, and Malt is usually full of it. So instead of picking the door and stealing the book- (it's a stupid plan anyway, he thinks, he wouldn’t even be able to read it. Malt can't either, so it doesn't even matter, he tells himself. Lapin's a very good talker. He almost convinces himself.)

Instead of stealing the book, he steals away into an alley across from the library and he watches. Waits.

Waits for hours as his stomach grumbles and his paws grow tired, waits until the sky has darkened and it’s starting to become dangerous to be out and about, because this is when the watch comes and shoos away anyone stupid enough to linger, and then he sees Malt.

Sees him take out picks that are better than Lapin's, and that makes his ears twitch, because Lapin could use those better, he knows he could, and Malt breaks into the library.

Lapin wants to follow. Wants to follow so bad his heart is thumping with it, his head is filled with wishes and wealth and _something_ , but by the time he makes up his mind to start moving, Malt is already hopping out.

He looks around the alleyway in a way that's stupidly obvious, but he doesn't see Lapin.

He heads to the forest, to the part that is darker and denser and deeper and more dangerous than where Lapin sleeps, and Lapin feels his heart start to race for different reasons, but his feet follow and he can't bring them to stop.

He follows Malt into the forest, follows him through brushes and weeds and there's no path in sight but somehow Malt knows where he's going. Unbidden, thoughts of stone circles cross his mind, and Lapin feels cold.

They walk for hours, Malt determined and wary and Lapin beginning to regret coming at all, aching with fear and adrenaline and hunger. They walk until the moon is high and the sky is black, and just as Lapin finally gives it up as a lost day and starts to turn back, Malt enters into a clearing.

Lapin stays hidden between the trees, but watches as Malt takes a chipped, dirty teacup out of his coat and sets it on the ground.

It’s like the stories, and not like them at all. There are stones set in a circle, in the center of the clearing. They’re double his size, maybe triple, and the moonlight reflects off of them in a way that makes Lapin's eyes hurt, and it's almost like the way the noon heat makes the air ripple in the height of summer, but it's autumn and night and the air is cool.

Malt opens the book and frowns. He spends minutes like that, flipping the pages, but the moon is still high when he opens it to a certain page and leaves it, open, on the ground.

Malt takes the teacup and breathes in deeply, and he steps into the circle of stones, and Lapin feels like lights have flooded the clearing and like the air is being stolen from his lungs and like he's drowning in sugar, and then he isn't.

There are no lights, and the air is fine and there's no more sugar in his lungs than there should be, but there's- there's a fairy in the circle. There’s _the Fairy_ in the circle.

Lapin can't see her face, but he can see Malt's. Can see the awe and fear and resolve, can see him start to talk, and Lapin feels bitterness rising on his tongue, because that could have been _him_ , but as Malt stops talking, something about the Fairy changes. 

She gets... she gets bigger, and her wings aren't sugar-glass thin anymore and Lapin doesn't understand what he sees, but it is great and heavy and towering and feels like a lightning bolt struck ground and stayed there, and there is a shriek that Lapin doesn't recognize as a mortal sound but understands belongs to Malt all the same, and then there is a ringing silence.

There is silence, and then the Fairy moves, _turns_ , and Lapin is looking into the eyes of something he does not want to understand, four of them that are deep purple and seem to ripple like ponds but infinitely deeper, and she’s staring at him and _into him_ and she tilts her head and laughs like bells and says, _little rabbit, won't you come closer?_

Lapin is arrogant, and a good talker, and an even better listener, but in this moment, he understands that he is none of those. At this moment, Lapin is prey.

The Fairy beckons a hand that moves like a painting brought to life, too quick and too smooth and too jerky, like a man without bones and like a puppet on strings all at once, and Lapin turns tail, and runs like he’s never run before. The sound of laughter like bells follows him on a sugar plum wind.

Lapin is eighteen, and he's sitting at the bedside of Old Mrs Cadbury, who used to sit on her manor house porch and offer a cup of tea to any of the little orphan children desperate enough to sneak through gated alleyways. 

Lapin never liked tea and still doesn’t, but Old Mrs Cadbury would sit with whatever poor little orphan took her up on her offer, sit on old wooden stools in front of her fireplace and ask them to _tell me a story, dear? I’m afraid I’ve read straight through my library, go on, don’t be afraid_ , and Lapin would let the tea go cold and tell her the best story he could spin. At the end of every story, she would clap her hands together and smile, and tell him, _thank you dear, that was an excellent tale_ , and then she’d give him a loaf of bread with an easy, _I don’t have much of an appetite these days, I’m afraid_ , and so he sits on the same stool he learned to be the best liar in Freezyburg on and he tells Old Mrs Cadbury the best story of his life, so far. 

_Of course I’m your grandson, don’t you remember all those afternoons reading together?_

_Oh, my poor memory really is going if I’ve forgotten you, my darling boy. Could you tell me a story, young one?_

_Of course, Grandma Patch._

She chuckles and curses her old age and fading memory, and Lapin is eighteen and sleeping in her son's old bedroom and the warmth and comfort are worth the small ball of guilt in his chest, and maybe he should feel worse about his lies than he does, but maybe-shoulds don't keep you warm at night. Don’t keep your belly full.

Old Mrs Cadbury passes away a few weeks after ensuring her beloved grandson is enshrined in her will as her sole beneficiary, and it’s hardly a surprise given that her son had been killed in the war a few years earlier, and the old gossips outside the bakery tut and sigh about how at least she wasn't alone in her last days, Lady Cadbury, at least she wasn't alone in that big old manor house, and none of them spare a thought for the dirty little orphan rabbit who used to sneak about the bakery.

Lapin Cadbury is twenty-eight, and he's a minor lord, the last living member of House Cadbury, who owns no land but for a manor house in Freezyburg, and he supposes if he really were a lord that would be upsetting, but he's got lockpicks in his sleeves and daggers in his coat and the pads of his feet are scarred from too many winters spent outside, and Lapin is more than happy to avoid what little court there is here in freezyburg, to let the rumor mill churn what it will- _oh, you know how old Lady Patch was, always hiding away in her home, it’s no wonder the boy’s the same way_ and _you know they’ve always been an odd family, the Cadburys_ \- while he stays warm and fed in his manor house, not rich compared to some of the other families, but left with a king’s ransom, compared to what Lapin has known.

Happy, at least, until there's a courier at his door, who hands him a letter stamped with a seal that a quick browse through Old Mrs Cadbury's library reveals to be the royal seal, and after a day full of cross referencing and squinting and rock candy mountain’s worth of frustration, Lapin determines that this is an invitation to the royal wedding of Archmage Lazuli Rocks and Countess Caramelinda Meringue, and he is going to have to teach himself to read.

Neither of these things are particularly good revelations, because Lapin quickly realizes that he can't not attend without bringing a worrying amount of attention to himself, and in order to attend, he's going to have to become a proper lord.

That would be easier if, for example, Lapin had any reference at all as to what a proper noble acts like, or longer than three months- two and a half, technically, because according to the map in Old Mrs Cadbury's study, it is going to take two weeks to get there- to figure it out.

The first thing he starts with, after spending an hour glaring at the letter whose fault this all is, is his clothing. Mostly because reading and courtly manners are things that give him a headache just to think about, and surely clothes must be easier? 

It's not something he typically puts a lot of thought into, at least not anymore than, _will this keep me warm, yes? good_ , so he spends another hour staring at the closet of who he can only guess was Mrs Cadbury's late son. There are fabrics he doesn’t recognize, more layers than he can understand, and far too many patterns.

He turns around and heads back to the library, and hopes there will be something helpful there.

(As it turns out, there very much is. This is how Lapin spends the next two months: learning the history of “his” family, learning how to properly read, learning what he's expected to wear, and learning all of the ways he'll be expected to act.

In practicality, he learns enough writing to hopefully pass as someone who simply took an interest in less academic pursuits, enough family history to last him through a surface level conversation, and enough understanding of noble clothing to make most people think he’s just old fashioned. 

He decides that his family’s reputation for isolationist tendencies will have to cover anything he missed.)

Finally the day comes for him to leave, and his servants- who Lapin knows quite well, despite making a point to avoid speaking with them at every turn. He knows they're loyal to the House of Cadbury, and the few who aren't are loyal to their steady paycheck that Lapin is less responsible for causing and more responsible for not bothering to mess with.

The journey itself is boring, although Lapin learns almost as much from the other minor lords whose keeps he rests at along the way as he did from Old Lady Cadbury's library.

He learns that House Cruller is starting to get uppity what with their heir's status as one of prince Amethar's closest friends and advisors, and that Gustavo of House Uvano of Fructera, is allied with Lazuli and Amethar both, and that House Meringue is rumored to be seeking an advisor for their lady in the castle, among many other interesting secrets.

As he arrives at Castle Candy, Lapin finds himself... eager, almost, to test his skills against the nobility.

Lapin is twenty-eight, and he is attending a royal wedding, and he is surrounded by people that are richer than him, better fed than him, less scarred than him, that are higher and holier and _more valuable_ than him, at least if you were to ask them, and they treat him like an equal. 

He watches ladies and lords that command the ears of kings bow to him with a polite smile, and Lapin thinks of standing in a grove and being jealous of a foolish child with a book, and thinks, _I needed no wishes to get here_ , and it’s heady and sweeter than a Candian soul, and Lapin thinks he could get _used_ to this. 

There is the undercurrent of fear, the knowledge that if he missteps they’ll know- if they dig too far into his life, they’ll know, ask the right people in Freezyburg, they’ll know, but there is also the knowledge that Lapin is the best liar he knows, and almost as good a listener, and he’s learning that when it comes to the Candian court, there is almost nothing more important than that, and so the undercurrent of fear makes it all the more _satisfying_ when he fools them.

The days of mingling pass, and the actual wedding would likely be more impactful if he knew either of the brides as more than names on pages, but it’s the _people_ that fascinate Lapin. 

He meets as many of them as he can, learns everything he can about them, and the people they know and the people those people know. 

He comes away from three days of greetings and chatter with more secrets than he knows what to do with, and he mourns that he’ll have to leave here soon, return to his aging manor house in Freezyburg (and what a change, from ten years of contentment and stagnation. To think, how much better he could've been if he’d put that time to use-)

It's on the last day of mingling and listening and lying, that Lapin meets Caramelinda Rocks, and they have a truly fascinating conversation.


End file.
